Aspects of the disclosure relate in general to a phased array system for efficiently and simultaneously processing multiple signals by applying distributed processing, channelization, and channel synthesis.
Modern phased array communication systems often include hundreds or thousands of antenna elements used to transmit and receive multiple beams across a wide range of frequencies. In such systems, the signal processing requirements can be substantial, especially when wideband signals are involved. For this reason, some phased array systems have been designed to incorporate a distributed signal processing architecture that involves multiple local processors that each perform certain signal processing and beamforming tasks specific to a single antenna or group of adjacent antennas. The local processors are controlled by a central processor that determines beam direction, performs carrier recovery and error detection, and distributes control and timing information used by the local processors in performing the distributed signal processing and beamforming functions. In effect, a phased array system with distributed architecture operates in a computationally efficient manner by parallelizing a large portion of signal processing operations, thereby achieving speedup that increases as an exponential factor of the number of local processors that are used.